Scattered!

House guests over the weekend meant that I had to clean out the Spare 'Oom. Now that they have departed, I have a perfect design floor.  :) Win for me (extra large design floor) and win for Jack (who won't have to put up with me taking over the living room for my quilt layouts.)

Of course,  as is natural, I had to start a new quilt. You know, to test out my new design floor.

This quilt is inspired by Scattered by Rebecca Bryan. It can be found in her book Modern Rainbow.

I started by sorting my lights, mediums, and darks.

Colored pieces in a randomish arrangement and surrounded by whites.

Then I added the grays and blacks. Uhoh... not enough blacks.

I'm going to delve into my stash and see if I have any black fabric I can chop up into charms to make up the difference.

Quilt-volution

I thought it would be fun to see the evolution of my quilting journey. These are more or less in order of finish, but not in order of when I started them. It would be a little difficult to sort by start order. For example, the Penrose Square quilt near the bottom was one of the first that I started.

Given to my niece - I think she uses it to keep her slippers on :)

Project Linus

Tree skirt

My own personal mug rug

Project Quilt Lemonade

Wall hanging in my computer room

Project Linus

Project Linus

Given to Nana

For my niece - first side of two sided quilt

For my niece - other side

Donated to nursing home

Wall hanging in my living room

Gifted to a friend of the family with chronic illness

For baby cousin

For baby cousin

For a little girl at my church

Wall hanging in my sewing room

To my sister in law

Here are the projects I am still working on in no particular order. Some of these are intended as gifts, some are just for me, and some have no plan yet.

Maybe eventually, you know, in my spare time, I will put them in order of start. I think that would be fascinating.

Housework can wait - there is quilting to be done!

It's been a quilty week, in between my other chores. 

I now have a 2 ft square section of my A Quilter's Mixology quilt put together. I have enough fabric cut out for a 4 x 6 ft finished quilt, and more fabric I can chop up. This will be a nice big quilt when completed.

Just a few minutes ago, I finished putting together the top for the baby quilt. Its been on the living room floor way too long and I'm having house guests this weekend, so it had to get put together. Oh, gee, what a shame that I had to spend so much time quilting this week when I could have been doing housework. I'm all broken up about it. Additionally, I now have space to lay out the modern rainbow quilt I have planned. ;) Happiness! 

I think I will be quilting this with circles and I haven't decided whether to go with white or green and blue variegated for the thread. Opinions?

Slow Sunday Stitching

Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching @ Kathy's Quilts.

Yesterday was a little rough, so I put away Fall Fairy and pulled out a new start. I fully intended to finish a page before putting her away but it just didn't happen.

Last Update

As of 08/09/2015

 My new start isn't really *new* per se, but is a restart of a restart, The Fairy Spell by HAED.

Last year I started The Fairy Spell on 28 count with two strands over one and I only made it a couple hundred stitches before deciding that 2 x 1 was too dense at 28 count and I couldn't manage it.

2x1 on 28 count - yuk!

I restarted on 28 count using 1x1 and it came out much nicer, but then I discovered that the "evenweave" wasn't very even and would produced a stretched image at the end, so I scrapped that one too. 

After that, I tried a couple different types of linen for various projects with mixed results. I really hated having to grid and attempting to work around the fishing line or metallic thread. I thought it made my stitches skewed and uneven. I also made an attempt at parking, various finishing techniques, and cross country. All in all, a learning experience.

The end of the story is that I finally found a fabric I like, it comes pregridded and the evenweave is actually even. I now use 25 count DMC magic guide for all my HAEDs and I love it. This does unfortunately mean that I scrapped four projects before I figured it out but they were not very far along and I am much happier with a restart than with struggling with fabric I don't like.

At the advice of a blogger that I asked about how she stitches her TW projects so quickly, I set up a poor man's version of the Pako Thread Organizer. A block of styrofoam and a copy of my thread list later, and I have a fully functional thread organizer with interchangeable thread lists.

Before I start stitching, I thread several needles in the colors I need and stick them into the organizer next to the correct symbol. It takes a couple minutes to set up but saves time flipping through my threads later and eliminates wishy-washy-ness about which color to stitch next.

The Fairy Spell 

I started in the lower left hand corner this time, so that little blob actually represents a page finish ;)

Project Journal 2.0

A couple weeks ago, I made a medic belt flag. I promptly dropped it in the mail without bothering to write down dimensions or construction details.  Oops, especially considering that this isn't the first time I've wanted to remake a project I designed and not had any instructions to follow.

For a little while I used a physical journal, but it was often getting lost in the shuffle of my cutting table, or I would forget to write down what I was doing. 

Today, I decided to make a Project Journal in One Note, which if you did not know yet, is now free for all platforms, syncs across all devices, and notebooks are now shareable! Love it! One Note has come a long way since I started playing with it several years ago. 

The tabs at the top are project type (quilts, garb, other) and I still need to add a few more. The pages on the side will each be dedicated to an individual project. 

I really like this system so far, especially since I am very unlikely to lose my computer and it is much easier to add pictures and formatting is a breeze.

It will also serve as a record of items I've made and probably make writing tutorials and blog posts easier. I can add progress photos!

I've decided not to attempt to back log everything I've done but as I work on WIPs and UFOs or start new projects they will get added to the journal.

The most unsettling thing about OneNote is there is NO SAVE BUTTON, which is disturbing to a chronic save-button-pusher like myself. OneNote saves everything automatically in the background as it is edited, but that hasn't stopped me from looking for the save button yet!